Stylistics of Pessimism (Tashawom) in Fadwa Tuqan’s Ode Kharif and Massa’e (Autumn and Evening)

Stylistic studies address the linguistic features of literary works. Such studies attempt to reveal the aesthetic aspects of literary works and their prevailing features via the employment of linguistic tools. These studies aim to capture the shared points of the collected works of a poet or writer which is realized following examination of the stylistic aspects of works characterized by special themes. The Ode Kharif and Massa’e (autumn and evening) as an important ode of her works showcases the pessimism that overshadows the poet and the environment surrounding her poems. In this ode, she has adopted an inspiring, signifying tone as an exhortative and persuasive feature as part of a manifest style to communicate her pessimism. This is exactly the characteristic that has given this ode its literary prominence. The present study attempted to conduct a stylistic examination of pessimism in Fadwa Tuqan’s Ode Kharif and Massa’e as a quintessence of her works and then proceeded to analyze it at the phonetic, expressive, and syntactic levels via the adoption of an analytical-descriptive approach and stylistic theories. The research results revealed the natural consequences of two bitter, unpalatable incidents to be major factors in prompting the poet towards pessimism. The family disaster in the form of the loss of her brother on the one side and consecutive failures at the political level, particularly regarding the issue of Palestine on the other side imprisoned her in an endless loop of pessimism and distrust which gave rise to the dominance of death and nullity over her thinking and imaginations. Pessimism and resigning to unavoidable fate are closely associated with Tuqan’s poetic language and her particular poetic style to express concepts of desperation and pessimism. Using phonetic devices to express her emotions, Tuqan adopted the interrogative style to express uncertainty of the future, the bleakness of fate, and the impossibility of her wishes and desires. The expressive images portrayed in her poems and the lexicon she employed clearly denote her orientation towards despair and pessimism in her poems. Thus, defamiliarization was picked frequently in her works.